How to Evade Accountability
In a week’s time, the Illegal Migration Bill will continue its legislative journey in the House of Commons. Normally this would mean detailed scrutiny by a committee of MPs who would go through the Bill line-by-line and hear evidence from experts in the area.
That will not be the case here though.
Despite the Bill being so controversial that the Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, has been unable to issue a statement that it is compatible with the European Convention of Human Rights, the proposals will instead be debated by a so-called ‘committee of the whole house’.
As the name suggests, this is where Parliamentary time is used to debate a bill in the House of Commons. In some ways that is a good thing because it gives every MP an opportunity to speak and express their views but that is also the downside because it leads to a cacophony of voices and more political grandstanding than proper debate. There will also be no expert evidence for MPs to take advantage of as they make their decision.
The government knows all of this and it is a deliberate ploy.
Committees of the whole house tend to only be used when there is a matter of significant constitutional or ethical importance on the agenda. The government’s argument, it follows, is that the small boat crisis is a pressing matter that benefits from the input of all MPs. That is also likely the reasoning behind why only two days of Parliamentary time have been set aside for debate.
As the Institute for Government has pointed out, this has unfortunately become the new norm. The pandemic was a genuine crisis that merited a swift legislative response and some of the (self-imposed) deadlines around Brexit also meant that Parliament had to act quickly.
The lessons from that period should be that law-making in this way does not work. The Covid-era laws were often confused and arbitrary and we are still dealing with the fallout from the Northern Ireland Protocol several years later. Full and deliberate scrutiny is the best way to go yet the government has clearly not learnt this lesson. Instead it has realised that this is an effective way to get controversial proposals through the House of Commons speedily and with limited opposition.
When this happens, the British public instead have to rely on two other institutions to hold the government in check.
Ironically the unelected House of Lords will likely provide more democratic accountability for the Illegal Migration Bill. The Lords will not be subject to the same committee process or timetable limitations as the government and so this will be where the real scrutiny will occur. Indeed if the Bill is fundamentally flawed it is not impossible that the House of Lords will vote down the proposals entirely.
If the Bill does receive Royal Assent it will then be for the courts to work out the practical consequences of the legislation. Their hands are tied by the principle of parliamentary supremacy and even breaches of the Human Rights Act can only lead to ‘declarations of incompatibility’ in the UK. Ultimately the government is probably setting itself up for a fight with the European Court of Human Rights but that might be exactly what it wants.
The declining influence of the House of Commons has been well documented over the past few years. Government is exercising power more directly than ever before via secondary legislation but this attempt to force primary legislation through is a new and worrying tactic.
This next week will be a crucial time for opposition parties as they will not only have to scrutinise the legislation but also highlight key areas of concern to raise during the committee of the whole house. The process has the makings of a farce so MPs will have to focus their efforts to hold the government to account.
In this week’s episode of the podcast we discuss Rent Repayment Orders. These orders can be used by tenants to reclaim rent when a dodgy landlord has leased sub-standard accommodation. Here the Supreme Court was asked whether they can also be used against a landlord’s landlord as well.
Episode link: https://uklawweekly.com/2023-uksc-9/
Make a difference today,
Marcus